Growing up with stories thrilled my imagination and let it fly. When I was tiny, the stories I heard from my parents and grandparents, kept me away from the wild waters edge many a time, as I felt the Kelpies wanting me to reach out a hand to touch their equine mane, so they could drag me away to other realms. It all started with Kelpies and Selkies and Trolls living under bridges rather than Princesses being “Saved” by Prince Charming!
Sometimes there’s just been a few stories that have been forefront and alive, just a handful, but more than enough. In the challenging places, of Deep, Wild, Painful, Terrifying, Isolated, Descent, it was Often Innana that was closest in. What helped with Her tale particularly (And also Persephone, and Skeleton Woman..) was not the descent but that there was also a Return. That always helped, particularly when I Thought it was a one-way journey - down!
I notice that it was a community of feminine tales that I mostly leaned into - Innana, Skeleton Woman, Fox Woman, Sedna, Baba Yaga, Medusa, and Sekhmet... These tales supported, nourished, taught, healed, and helped me put the broken fragments back together again.
The story that’s alive right now, is the Handless Maiden. A tale I saw in “Women who run with the wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, but I hadn’t begun the intense journey then and the story didn’t land as it does now. This is the thing, the stories Wait for you, Until! I’ve rediscovered this one in a fantastically resonant book called “Smokehole, looking to the wild in the time of the spyglass” by Dr Martin Shaw. And yes, I notice how my being lit up and I Devoured the book and this tale ravenously, like a delicious meal!
Stories are More than. More than the first glimpse for sure. Letting them in and they ignite in me and Blaze to light up inner secret chambers. I also long since learnt to be curious and open and feel into where I connect with all of it. It’s not Just about the Hero/ Heroine, it’s about the lot- the father that pushes a daughter over a cliff, or the father that chops off his daughters’ hands, or the mother that doesn’t stop him, or the grieving one who kills her sister and hangs her up on a hook…
In this latest story, my hands tingled when I read it and I let it in. So very much has unfurled in my own tale and at the moment, it feels like I’m back out in the forest Again, in with the Wild Mother of Nature, but this time it’s so much more incredibly softer, and there’s not so much going on At ALL, which IS the place of Deep Healing. No longer feeling lonely but deeply connected, even in the solitude.
I Will, no doubt, renter the world Sometime, but growing hands, or anything else, back takes time, it takes as long as it takes. To even turn towards deep wounds is a slow, intimate, and tender journey. Yes, yes, in astrology I have Chiron in Aries in my natal chart and That’s the place, that’s the Big wound that has been the great teacher.
And…. once the hands are back…Wake them Up! They have been missing in action for a while, wake them and Use them!